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Milan Film Festival

There's no way to know for sure if ten days are enough to change a city. But if ten days are enough to present a complete cultural project, and to create a desire to go on a difficult quest, the city of Milan can't help but pay attention. For this reason, and for the twelfth year, it has welcomed, with enthusiasm and just the right amount of curiosity, the Milan Film Festival. The festival is an event that more and more people have been able to attend each year, one that wishes to create a network of connections between Milan and its surrounding areas.

The reason for the festival is cinema, in its pure state: film makers who are just starting out, who speak about far off lands, who show particular points of view, and who try, by visual means, to provide an outlet for a storehouse of images that would otherwise remain hidden.

Fifty-three short films and seven feature films make up the two international competitions, but the (very difficult!) selection is made from more than 2,500 entries which include documentaries, mockumentaries, biographies, video art, video dance, video clips, and film animation.

The invitation to participate in the festival is extended to works of every type, in all languages, of any length, with no restrictions as to origin, and in all formats. In 2007 it was open from January 1st to May 31st. In addition to independent directors, it reaches a variety of film schools and the major film festivals in both Italy and abroad, in order to offer a selection of the highest quality.

The attendance in Milan was about eighty thousand people. The venues were: the Piccolo Teatro, the courtyard of which has always been the festival's main site; the Piazza del Cannone, a new location in 2007, with screenings of entries as well as of films that were not entered, along with live concerts, workshops, and meetings, similar to what took place around the moats of the Sforza Castle in previous years and the Civic Arena in 2006; the Spazio Oberdan; the Civic Aquarium, which this year was open to children and became the location of the "Little Film Festival of Milan"; and the House of the Directors on Via Molise, which for ten days was host to the festival's directors, guests, and public.

Many of the attendees were able to set down their impressions of the festival in the handy, classic Moleskine notebooks that were specially produced for the occasion, just as in the previous year, and personalized with the festival's logo.

In fact, this famous notebook, which could not be absent from such lively goings on, was given to all of the festival's participants, with a limited number also available for sale to the public. Some interesting facts: the longest film in 2007 was a British documentary that ran 199 minutes; there were twenty-seven short features that ran just one minute; forty-five films had the word "death" in their title, among them one from Israel, one from Thailand, and two from the United States; eighty films had the word "love" in their title, among them three from Italy, one from Iran, and two from Malaya.